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Hmm. If Marky Mark’s trying to restore his broken reputation after The Crappening, he’s perhaps picked the wrong Semi-Ironic Action Film With Inexplicable Angel O’Death Cameo for his next project.

Admittedly, it evokes the games’ knowing super-cheese, but, well, doesn’t seem to have translated terribly well back to the celluloid the games originally pilfered from. It could work, in a Grindhouse kinda way, but the trailer… No. Yeah, it’s a Youtube-friendly giggle in and of itself, but my problem is I tried to picture that approach spread over two full hours and saw only brain-ache. I am a hopeless cynic, of course.

Thanks to “the_incredible_bohemian” for the tip. Which is certainly something I don’t type every day.

What teh fcuk? I found it awesome, and very true to games.An others reaction from what I could read was quite positive as well..
It may be cheesy, but compared to that Hitman movie abomination, this is masterpiece (the trailer, that is).

I was actually pleasantly surprised. It’ll still probably be awful, of course, but it doesn’t look nearly as terrible as I was expecting. There actually seemed to be some decent filmmaking involved with some decent cinematography evoking a decent atmosphere…maybe the bar’s just been set so incredibly low that anything that shows a slight bit of style seems like a breakthrough?

But yes, as you say, Max Payne isn’t exactly the best material for game->film translation, given that the game was a silly mash-up of movie cliches. It just about survived in a game environment, but if it’s put back into movieland it’ll just be a comedy excercise. He’s called Max Payne, for christ’s sake!

Well, I just hope the movie has some argument. Max Payne was not only the bullet time, Max Payne was the narration, the “tempo”, the way to sell you a 6-hours game in a time of 20-hours games and end it saying “Yes, it’s excellent. No more levels for the narration as it built”

All of this concern over the angel of death seems to be ignoring the strong element of Norse mysticism (and general occult goings-on) that pervaded the entire game. While Max never found himself swept out of a window on black wings, he did come to the realization that there were forces at work that were far beyond the ken of mortal men. He was working for Wotan (Woden), after all. And while he was a one-man revenge machine with a dead wife haunting his heart, many of his enemies were not just bad men, but devotedly evil (“The flesh of fallen angels!”).

That being said … I just don’t see how Wahlberg is going to maintain the noir sensibilities and wry gallows humor of Max.

Also, I have my doubts that Wahlberg will realize suddenly that he’s just an actor in a movie ….

It’s bound to be better than Hitman. But then, I didn’t really enjoy the only hitman game I played either (Blood Money, for the inevitable bashing I’ll recieve) and did enjoy Max Payne, so I’m probably going into this one with a bit higher tolerance level.

Jon, I’d say be careful what you write because JT may end up trying to use it in court to prove that gamers are all evil devil child things, but we probably don’t have to worry about that anymore.

I don’t remember seeing any “forces” at work, just lunatics, raving mad men and fanatics… Unless we count game mechanics and point out bosses take more bullets to kill… Dream sequences etc could just be considered Payne’s illusions, he did go through a lot of tough shit…

If I recall correctly, the sequel had even less mentions of the mystical (and was also a damn good game but lacked a mod as great as Kung Fu mod for MP1 was).

Sorry Alec but… what /exactly/ is wrong with that trailer? Apart from WALL*E*Berg screaming in front of a CG New York, I think it’s pretty sweet. Well, apart from the fact it looks a bit like Constantine. Bear in mind I also have the script for the film and found it surprisingly good – hence am a little biased.

Surprisingly good, but with more than a few key omissions. For example, Italian mobsters have mostly been replaced with Voodoo-spouting Haitans and the cheesy noirish narration bookends the film, rather than playing throughout.

The demons are very much a sympton of a new drug that seems to make everyone see them, rather than just one person.

Heh! I’m the same, I saw this earlier over at ShackNews and was pleasantly surprised. The cast is well chosen, the acting seems pitched at the right level, and the whole thing smells of Sin City, which can only be a good thing. I was initially dubious about this, but as they’ve retained the comic book format, and clearly gone for a Frank Miller look… My hopes are high, and the trailer wasn’t half bad.

Because Max Payne 2 is one of my favourite games ever, and I wanted to see how the filmmakers were going to translate it. That and the fact this film was announced about 8 years ago, and all that time for them to fuck it up would have annoyed me more than any other typical videogame adaptation.

The music (despite being composed by Marilyn Manson) was quite close to the games, the characters all looked right (especially Mona Sax) and if the angels are (hopefully) just an hallucination, then its definitely in a better position than anything that’s come before it.

edit: Scratch that, Bravura is played by *spit* Ludacris… What the hell?

It looks like nonsense, though. Mark Wahlberg looks like a big wuss at the best of times, rather than a grim faced hopped up vengeance monger with a nice line in simile. Someone somewhere compared it to Constantine, which makes sense. They’ve beefed up the occultism and lost the Max Payne-ness. Much like the Doom movie, except the other way around.

“It’ll be better than Hitman” is hardly praise. 99.99% of everything in the world is better than the Hitman film, and that includes several forms of torture.

It looks faintly watchable, but I see absolutely nothing to do with Max Payne in it, and nothing to distinguish it from eleventy billion other stupid stunt/tedious slow motion on wires action flick, and it’s about eight years to late to jump on that bandwagon anyway. Even the gravelly voice over didn’t have the brilliant metaphors that made the game’s narration such fun. Meh/10.

I’m sorry, but the only good Max Payne movie they could possibly make would just be a Fraps recording of all of the first game. It is intentionally cinematic. The angel thing going on looks awful. The Valkyrie plot and the Aesir corporation stuff was a goldmine. Please God, don’t let this happen

“The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Cameras shot my every move. The room was a sound stage, the walls built of thin wood. I was speaking another man’s words, hammered out in black ink against a white page by some Hollywood hack. I was in an action movie. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.”